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Monday, August 11, 2014

Documentary Assignment: Documenting events and/or processes

The process of composing lesson plans has been unilaterally
deflating for me, but, in creating a documentary assignment, I encountered particular difficulty in coming up with an
assignment for students that I could also complete an example of.(My life and the spaces, events, and people I
have access to are rather antithetical to the lived reality of most students
mature enough to maneuver a camera and editing software.)So the parameters of my final lesson plan are
ultimately a bit more vague than I’d like.If I were spending more time in a teaching environment, it’d be more
feasible for me to complete a project along the more clearly defined parameters
of my first draft of the assignment, so I think they are both useful as
alternatives to one another even though they sort of reverse the process of
capturing footage.One exercise gathers
interviews about a past event, while the other gathers interviews about an
ongoing process, and then captures the field footage of that process afterward.They both create an opportunity for
recognizing the process of trying to match interview sound bites with the
footage of the event or process that allows for appropriate contextualization
and understanding.

I continue to be humbled by the process of working with
equipment I’m not entirely familiar or comfortable with, and the process of
filming an interview is still stressful for me.Two of my interviews were severely compromised by my willingness to rush
through setting up the shot because it felt so awkward to ask my subject to
wait for me to get it just right.The
first interview I conducted was with my Aunt Heidi, and it was my first time
using the Seinheisser wireless mic system with my camera.I hadn’t had time to be trained on it before
that, and I could tell on playback that the levels were too high, but I
couldn’t figure out how to adjust them on the transmitter/receiver units and
didn’t have a user-manual with me.Rather than make my subject wait for me to figure it out (she was in a
hurry), we just kept moving the mic further from her mouth, and she tried to
speak more softly than usual.All the
microphone drama led me to forget to re-set my focus after moving the tripod,
and so not only was the sound bad, but the subject was out of focus.Bad news, and no time to re-do the interview,
so I’m forced to use it despite how awful it is.I also had problems shooting my Aunt Holly,
as the light levels (coming from a window) dropped drastically almost
immediately after we started shooting.I
did stop her and adjust them once, but the lighting in almost her entire
interview is problematic.I didn’t feel
comfortable stopping her to adjust the lighting as often as I’d have needed to
to save all the shots, so I’m still working through how I ought to have handled
that.I’m mostly concluding that it would
have been better to have dealt with mixed lighting, or less-attractive
lighting, and to have had the levels be more consistent than to have been at
the mercy of unpredictable cloud cover. (Also, I've conceded I am too stingy with ISO, I need to think rather differently about it in video than in still photography).

(I’m not altogether happy with the other two interviews, I
think they look really blown out, even though the meter in my camera was
telling me 0.All of these things point
to: Emily needs more practice. Preferably under less stressful, rushed
circumstances.)

Ultimately, I think this could be a really fun unit or lesson
to teach.Especially in a time when more
and more youth are actively creating media for the web, I find it exciting to
think about equipping them with the skills to create more polished and engaged
pieces about their own lives and the lives of those around them.It seems like a pretty effective way for them
to engage in virtual communities and invite investment from their peers and viewers, and thus a really relevant skill set for them to have.